Meningitis outbreak: Two new TN victims identified

Sep. 19, 2013

Written by

Walter F. Roche Jr.

The Tennessean

The names of two area victims who died in the fungal meningitis outbreak have become public for the first time, including a 91-year-old Kentucky woman who sought treatment in Nashville for relief from chronic back pain and died a month later.

Estalene “Effie” Morris of Cadiz, Ky., died on Oct. 29, 2012, a little over a month after she received the second of two injections of methylprednisolone acetate at the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center.

According to a 55-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Nashville, Morris, 91, learned for the first time in a letter dated Oct. 2, 2012, that she was at risk of contracting meningitis from the injections. Two days later she was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with a stroke and fungal meningitis.

The other victim identified in a separate suit was Patricia Gambaccini, 80, of Crossville, who was injected with the same steroid at a Crossville pain clinic.

She died on Oct. 19, 2012, following a single injection of the spinal steroid at the now-closed Specialty Surgery Center in Crossville on Sept. 11.

A suit also was filed on behalf of Reba Temple, 80, of Lyles, who died Oct. 6.

All three victims, according to the complaints, were injected with a fungus-tainted steroid shipped to Tennessee by the now-defunct New England Compounding Center, the company blamed by state and federal regulators for the deaths of 16 patients treated in Tennessee.

Nationwide, 63 patients have died as a result of the outbreak while 750 have been sickened, including 153 in Tennessee.

Morris, who left a son and daughter, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, was a homemaker and a member of the Cadiz United Methodist Church.

According to the complaint, she was injected with the spinal steroid on Aug. 28 and Sept. 11. An appointment for a third shot on Sept. 25 was canceled by the outpatient center. After initial treatment at a hospital, she was transferred to a Cadiz nursing home, where she died.

Like many of the other victims, Morris had been referred to the Saint Thomas outpatient center by a physician at the Howell Allen Clinic, which is part owner of the outpatient center.

Howell Allen, the Saint Thomas outpatient center and the owners of the Massachusetts compounding center are among the defendants in the suit filed for Morris’ family by Nashville attorney William Leader.

Gambaccini, who had retired from a job as a Kmart customer service agent, left three sons, a daughter and her husband, Mario.

According to the complaint filed in her case by attorney Randall Kinnard, she was hospitalized for 19 days before her death.

“She was in a great deal of pain,” the complaint states, adding that an MRI taken on Oct. 11 showed “the top of her spinal cord was caked in fungus.”

The defendants in that suit include the Specialty Surgery Center and the owners of the compounding center and related companies.

The Temple suit, filed by lawyers for her son, states that she received injections at the Saint Thomas outpatient center on Aug. 28 and Sept. 11, the same days as Morris. On Sept. 28, the complaint states, she called the Howell Allen Clinic, which had referred her for the shots, complaining of a “constant severe headache, earache and dizziness with falling.”

She was told to report immediately to Saint Thomas Hospital, where she was diagnosed with spinal meningitis. She died nine days later.

The suits are the latest in a series being filed in federal court as a legal deadline approaches. Under the Tennessee health care and product liability laws, claims must be filed within a year of the time when victims or their survivors first become aware of the cause of injury or death.

Four other suits were filed this week by patients of the Crossville surgery center who became ill after steroid injections.

A suit also was filed on behalf of Ella Redkevitch of Nashville, who was injected on Aug. 27 and Sept. 17 at the Saint Thomas center. She was hospitalized from Nov. 16 to Jan. 3 and remained on antifungal medication until May 8, according to the suit.